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Ben & Jerry's co-founder starts money-stamping campaign

Ben & Jerry's co-founder Ben Cohen has landed on a new way to his spread his campaign-finance reform message: Stamping dollar bills with slogans. "I'm stamping anywhere and everywhere. I'm stamping all the

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Ben & Jerry's co-founder Ben Cohen has landed on a new way to spread his campaign-finance message: Stamping dollar bills with slogans.

"I'm stamping anywhere and everywhere. I'm stamping all the time," Cohen told USA TODAY on Tuesday. "It's some monetary jujitsu -- using money to get money out of politics."

Cohen and his partners -- which include People for the American Way and Public Citizen -- want people to adorn money with messages such as "Corporations are Not People" and "Not to be Used for Bribing Politicians."

The goal, he said, is to "demonstrate massive, broad base support" for a constitutional amendment overturning the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision, which allowed unlimited corporate political spending on free-speech grounds.

Over the course of a little more than two years, a single stamped bill will reach an estimated 875 people, according to the organizers of the campaign, StampStampede. Stamp 10 bills every day for a year and reach 3 million people.

Though federal law bars defacing currency, Cohen and his Denver-based lawyer, Stephen Justino, say the campaign is legal because the stamps are political messages that don't damage the bills or otherwise harm their value.

The campaign officially launches Oct. 11 in California with the unveiling of what Cohen calls a "Rube Goldberg-type" 14-foot-long, automated money-stamping machine. Later that day, Cohen will appear at a Los Angeles branch of Ben & Jerry's to stamp bills. Participating customers will get a free ice cream cone.

Cohen, a veteran liberal activist, said he supports changing the Constitution to either require public funding of federal elections or to declare that spending money in politics is not protected by the First Amendment.

"If you end up saying money is free speech, you are no longer saying, 'It's one person, one vote.' You are saying, 'It's one dollar, one vote,' " Cohen said. "Maybe everyone has a voice, but maybe the only people who get heard are people who have a lot of money."